On the second day of Reid’s testimony in the Aurora movie theater shooting trial Friday, jurors heard the most complete explanation yet from Holmes of why he decided to commit a mass killing.

They also heard words that could prove devastating to his insanity plea for the attack he ultimately committed in July 2012, in which he killed 12 people and wounded 70 more at the Century Aurora 16 movie theater. Reid, who concluded Holmes was sane at the time of the attack, pointed to the surveillance detail as shaping his opinion.

“It suggests that he knew he was doing something wrong or planning something wrong,” Reid said.

Over the roughly four hours of video-recorded interviews that Reid conducted with Holmes as part of a state-ordered sanity evaluation and that were played in court Friday, jurors heard Holmes describe how a bout with mononucleosis and a breakup with the only girlfriend he ever had plunged him into the worst depression of his life in the spring of 2012. They heard Holmes talk about how fantasies of killing that he had had since at least high school grew more vivid.

“I transferred my suicidal thoughts into homicidal,” is how Holmes described it to Reid.

And they heard how what began as paranoid fears for his own safety escalated into an unstoppable desire to kill many others — even if Holmes, speaking slowly with a blank stare and no inflection in his voice, couldn’t explain why.

“There’s no anger,” he told Reid. Then, later: “It was just something I had to do. … It’s like I was obligated to do it.”

At one point, he told Reid that he avoided forming new relationships with people once the plan took shape. He had gone on a hike with a student from his neuroscience graduate program at the University of Colorado, and she later asked if he wanted to do something else together. But, by then, he had already dyed his hair red and assembled an arsenal of weapons in preparation for the attack. He cut off contact with her.

“I didn’t want to hurt her by putting her in jeopardy,” Holmes told Reid, who persisted: What kind of jeopardy?

“Like, being a girlfriend to a murderer.”

In the interviews, Holmes sat motionless like a wax figure, his lips the only thing moving. He breathed through his mouth. Reid sometimes seemed to grow frustrated that Holmes either lacked in or held back insight.

When Reid asked Holmes why he was drawn to TV sitcoms like “The Big Bang Theory,” Holmes responded that they were humorous. When asked why his fantasies changed from protecting himself to harming others, Holmes said he didn’t know.

“C’mon, smart guy,” Reid urged Holmes after another blank answer to a question.

Later, when Reid asked Holmes why he took on such a serious “mission,” Holmes replied, “I didn’t think it was all that serious.”

“I didn’t think the consequences through.”

But he later seemed to contradict that.

He told Reid he picked the Batman premiere for his attack because there would be a lot of people there. He said he dyed his hair red because he wanted to stand out. When Reid showed Holmes a photo that he took of himself in his body armor, Holmes told Reid he took the photo hoping he would be remembered.

Noelle Phillips, a Nashville native and a Western Kentucky University journalism school grad, covers law enforcement and public safety for The Denver Post. She has spent more than 20 years in the newspaper world. During that time, she's covered everything from rural towns in the Southeast to combat in the Middle East. The Denver Post is her fifth newspaper and her first in the West.

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